Czechoslovak Degrees at Oxford

Abstract

A UNIQUE ceremony was performed in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, on February 27, when the Vice-Chancellor of the University presided, at the request of the Czechoslovak Government, at the conferment on a group of Czechoslovak medical students of degrees of their own universities. The occasion had a practical and also a symbolic aspect. Czechoslovak students who have been able to complete their studies in Great Britain were thus acknowledged as trained workers, and given a status which will be readily recognized in their own country when the time comes for them to return and minister to their own people. They will not have to labour under the disadvantages sometimes inherent in possessing 'foreign' qualification. But there is also the wider significance of the event. One of the old universities of Great Britain, through its highest resident official, the Vice-Chancellor, gave itself for the time being to the use of the universities of Czechoslovakia, so that the jealously guarded privilege of the conferment of degrees might still be theirs. The difference between the treatment accorded to university and other students by the United Nations and by the Axis Powers needs no emphasis here : it is sufficient to refer to the numerous measures which have been taken to facilitate the continuance of their studies by foreign students in the free countries, and to contrast these conditions with the wholesale persecution to which they have been subjected in occupied Europe. The ceremony at Oxford was a fitting mark of the international character of learning.